Profile

Katharina Pistor

• Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law
  Committee on Global Thought
  Columbia University

Katharina Pistor is Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she teaches Corporations, Lawyering in Multiple Legal Orders, Globalization in Comparative Perspective, and Law and Capitalism. She previously taught at the Kennedy School of Government and has held research positions at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg and at the Harvard Institute for International Development in Cambridge, MA. Pistor's research focuses on comparative law and institutional development with special emphasis on corporate governance and financial market development. She has conducted several studies on the legal framework for the evolving corporate governance regime in transition economies, including field research of privatized firms and financial intermediaries in Russia. Jointly with Prof. Curtis Milhaupt she developed a new course on “law and capitalism,” which combines a survey of key literatures on the topic with detailed case studies of corporate governance scandals around the world. Students organized in teams conduct “institutional autopsies” of such scandals to uncover the underlying governance structures in various countries, such as China, Germany, Korea, Japan, Russia, and the United States. She is currently in the process of developing additional courses with the aim of integrating insights gained from comparative institutional analyses and practical experience from firms, financial institutions, and legal advisors in international practice into the law school curriculum.